c. 1858 Baseball Stiching Bench
 

Just picked this up at my local thrift shop, a duplicate of one that REA ran in a 2011 auction that appeared to be used in the first manufacture of baseballs by Harwood & Sons starting in 1858, at least according to a metal plate attached to the REA example. Mine doesn't have the plate nor the bench-maker etched into the wood as with REA's. I'm not hopeful, but anybody have anything to add to REA's write-up of this baby? Not sure what to do with it, but might take it to Chantilly and see if REA wants to run this one.
https://collectrea.com/archives/2011...titching-bench

Very cool! Does the price sticker say 20 bucks? :eek:

I’d love to know how that thing “works.”

100 bucks. I can't begin to figure the thing out, but I am a mechanical idiot. The one in REA looks to have the same parts, but assembled, so maybe that's a better bet. I suspect the leather strapping and floor pedal assembly is intended to somehow turn the baseball with one's legs while it is being stitched.

Still a smoking deal!

I wonder what the "experts" would say about applying something like linseed oil?

I'm not going to mess with it, even though I'm sure the old wood could be made to look a lot better. I'll leave that to someone else.

That's super cool Hank, and so is the REA example, BUT...

From REA description :
... What is all the more remarkable about this bench is the presence of a small engraved metal plaque affixed to the wooden support slate on the right side of the bench ... aside from the plaque, no additional provenance accompanies (so) the 1858 date and the specific attribution to the H. Harwood & Sons company to some extent therefore relies upon a leap of faith...


TO SOME EXTENT?!

Based on the facts described those three words should be replaced by a single word that is spelled by the letters : c o m p l e t e l y

And maybe they should be capitalized, and bold print might be nice, maybe even highlight the background around them.



Looks like you just need to make a plaque Hank, affix it to the side and then throw in a "leap of faith" and you've got enough proof for REA to call it an original.

Doug "and maybe it actually is" Goodman

good points all
 

I can't argue with a word you wrote, Doug, and never would. The plaque is of some interest, but I believe that any kind of direct provenance to Harwood would have elevated the REA auction results by some multiple. I suppose it IS a baseball stitching bench, though, and if you could see the wood construction and the iron and leather pieces that make up the working parts of the contraption, it screams old, old, old. Other than that, pick your cliche of choice, starting with "it is what it is" through "find another one," etc. I appreciate your expertise and your reality check!

I don't have any expertise, I just get annoyed by misleading (to be polite) descriptions.

I think they're both super cool, and while I myself wouldn't buy one at the REA price, you seem to have paid an amount that I probably would have.

I think the one you bought may have been a prototype for the REA one, which would of course would give yours more value IF it had a plaque stating that "fact", hint hint. How's 1837 sound to you as a date?


And I'm perfectly happy for my points to be argued and TO SOME EXTENT completely change my mind when my points are shown to be incorrect.

Ha! I'm not the plaque-making type unless I know what I'm plaquing about. Whether whoever made the REA plaque did or did not is complete conjecture, as you point out. Mine does appear to be of the exact same construction as the other one, though, so I'm not sure why you might think it a prototype as opposed to another example of the same generation of its kind, perhaps the first but who knows?

I'm not sure that it's a prototype, but if it had a plaque indicating that it was a prototype from, say 1775, then it's possible that it was also used to help shoe Paul Revere's horse which pretty much made it possible for America to be made great again (or not, haha) and so the value could be astronomical.

But that of course would TO SOME EXTENT involve a small, barely discernible, teeny tiny little leap of faith.

Doug "this is fun for me, I hope for you, too" Goodman

Articles
 

Hank, that is a nice piece of history. Many years ago I posted an article from the late 1860’s I think, about Harwood and how they made baseballs. I am sure a place like Protoball probably lists others. While I no longer have the article I remember that in the early years the balls were all stitched by local women in their homes. Also, I believe there is a Harwood museum in Natick that you could try to contact to get more information.

The article I am referring to was in the March 19, 1870 Oliver Optic magazine.

Or you could just keep beating your dead horse. In case you didn't notice, I get it, Doug. Hank "it is what it is, not what you, me, or REA says it is " Thomas.

Great stuff, thanks! That's the kind of info I was hoping to elicit. I'm wondering if the HOF might also have some.

The leather worker I shared a shop with a few years ago has a really nice one. I told him about the Harwood one bringing decent money and he thought it was really funny. It's a fairly common design for shoe stitching, and he had more than just the one in our shop. Apparently nearly every small maker or repair shop in the late 1800s had one, and many were still in companies storage into the early 2000s.

The pieces make a foot pedal, press the pedal it clamps, release it it releases. This one looks like it's got a ratchet, so it can probably stay clamped.

Thanks,Steve, you have nailed it, as I could have with a bit more online research. When I took "baseball" out of my search description, many of these popped up as generic stitching tools from the 19th century with no particular connection to baseball other than the REA listing, which, as Doug pointed out, was rather sketchy in its assumptions, and this elaborate write-up without sourcing from Keyman Collectibles, a usually reliable website. It seems entirely possible that these were indeed used to stitch baseballs along with other leather products, but without proof of that or any connection to Harwood, and given its condition, I'm now looking upon mine as more a piece of junk than anything else. It will be heading for the dump one of these days.
https://keymancollectibles.com/balls...lampsaddle.htm